We have all been there. We fucked up big time. It could be crypto or finance, could be relationships or other mismanaged situations, but the long story short is: you made a blunder. End of story. Or is it? We have all heard the dull truism that you ought to 'learn from our mistakes'. I do not wish to write about this (obviously very good) piece of advice. Today I will write about how you can profit from a mistake that has already happened. Avoiding mistakes in the future is arguably one way of profiting, but there are other, more immediate benefits that a mistake can be made to bring. Yes, made, the title is vary carefully worded: the point is not to pretend that you can do the impossible and actually turn a loss into a gain (a loss of 20 dollars will never become a gain of 20 dollars) but to repurpose the experience of loosing into some kind of winning.
This can be achieved in various different ways, but all of those that can be implemented by the average Joe involve some kind of mental gymnastic. This has obvious hazards, we should not for instance camouflage losses to trick away the guilt of gambling. A loss is a loss and it is undesirable, whatever fancy coping method anyone comes up with. So take this as a warning: the methods below are meant only after you conduct a rational analysis of the loss, determining what happened and why, working out what perhaps we might not want to do next time. But after you do that you might want to benefit from the experience of loss and here is how you do that.
Use the experience as a talking point. This increases your societal value, or, expressed more frankly, makes you better at parties. Leaning back on the sofa upon the mention of Boeing, smirking and throwing a casual 'oh yeah, fuck 'em, lost 150 bucks trading their futures a couple of years ago. Real dumb mistake' makes you much more likable than someone who says 'oh yeah, great company, made 150 bucks trading 'em the other day'. The first comes across as humility and showcases how you are emotionally divorced from the past. It is bragging about being a cool trader without bragging about being a cool trader. Talking about your gains is very ungentlemanly, talking about your losses is mature. Not only that, but being able to maintain the outward appearance of maturity usually comes with a degree of inner maturity as well. Do not get me wrong, pretending to like whiskey and wearing a shirt don't make you level-headed on their own, but I think the best way to act out a certain person is to be that person and so if you are to come across as convincing in your confidence-enough-to admit-failure it may help to think about what you are about to say and actually adopt it. To put it shortly: I advise you re-forge your failures into strengths by thinking what the Alpha way of handling them is and then learn to perform that by internalising it. And don't listen to those who say that makes you into a 'poser' somehow: life is a stage. Just be honest about what is happening in your head, both to others and yourself.
But using the story of your loss to impress people is just the tip of the iceberg and in fact, one of the more boring tactics. Is it not infinitely better to recast the story as a series of blunders, made by you and others, illustrated with loud exclamations and facial expressions suggesting joy? You may that that this would make you the butt of the joke, but a well told story makes people laugh along with you, not at you. Tell your friends you got distracted on the slope and crashed into a tree. You can tell them this with a sad face, explain how much it hurt and how it ruined your trip. Everyone will be sad or feign sadness. It will not be a pleasant experience for anyone, unless you like pity. How much better would it be to say: 'Oh I am so absent-minded, one time on the slope I was thinking about how much money I would make on Boeing futures and I actually crashed into a tree! Hilarious! Broke my clavicle btw, hurt like hell, lol. I had to be airlifted out, and guess what, they gave me this anesthetic that made me talk some weird things, apparently I asked the paramedics if the heli was a Boeing or not.' See the difference?
Crashing into a tree is not something you look forward to, in fact, most people crash into trees because they do not look forward enough. <laugh track> How you end up describing that experience will impact those around you, but you can benefit immediately and personally from changing your own perception of what happened, not to warp it out of perspective, but for instance highlighting an aspect of it that was not amusing when it happened, but is now. Say you pay for an online service and communication with the hireling is very bad. He speaks very poor English and tries to overcharge you etc. You end up getting such poor service that you have to pay for someone else to finish the job. What could possibly be amusing? Go back and read the messages a week later and you might chuckle, even though the memory of 60 dollars or so still stings you in the wallet. The real amusement were the retards we met along the way.
Apart from amusing yourself and others with your failures and impressing people with your emotional maturity there is also a more sinister way to use your failures. They can become a painful reminder of sorts, stopping you not from making the same mistake, but stopping you doing any activity you might want to curb. Say you regret not chatting up that cute girl at the bus stop. You consider that a mistake and to punish yourself you decide you will not watch any porn this week, maybe this month. The two things may seem unrelated, but if you somehow related them in your head, making one a mistake and the other a punishment for that mistake, they they are at least mentally linked in your brain, and that's what really matters. This tactic may lead to poor outcomes when left unexamined. A good example are people suffering from anorexia, who perceive eating as 'weakness' and punish themselves for eating something with eating even less. But using failure as a spur to action is a very good, flexible algorithm which makes a mistake into something profitable, the start of something new.
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The picture shows William Brydon, army surgeon and sole survivor of a British expeditionary force of 16500, which was slaughtered while retreating from Kabul in the winter of 1842. The British Empire took an incredible beating in Afghanistan and the event was a great calamity, but do you enjoy the picture?
